I don’t use that lockscreen, so it’s not a practical problem for me. I’m just curious as I was very puzzled when I noticed it in the beginning.
The lockscreen in KDE Plasma lets anyone see what song is currently being played or is paused, and even allows you to resume playing it. Without being “logged in” (unlocked).
Yes, it can more than likely be turned off. But I wonder what the intention of this feature is. I thought the whole point of a lockscreen was to… lock out people from using the machine in any way until they have authenticated themselves? If the machine is in lock mode, its rightful operator is probably not physically around. And if they are, they can still listen to whatever song they are currently listening to even with the lockscreen displayed, assuming they didn’t mute before locking.
So why display this information to the public, and why allow them to play the song?
KDE Plasma is relatively great in many ways compared to both modern Windows and XFCE, but some of the defaults really make me scratch my head…
i can easily imagine a use case where you have linux set up as a music server and you don’t want tit to stop playing music just because the display device is timed out.
also anyone can then intervene in the playback in case you are not around to provide credentials, say the phone rings and a person needs quiet to answer the phone but you are not around… at least they can stop it without pulling wires out of things.
But why would it stop playing music just because the lockscreen is activated? That’s not what happens on any OS and with any lockscreen I’ve ever used, which I also pointed out.
The second scenario I suppose would make sense, but also sounds like an extremely specific situation…
What if you are sitting there listening while you work on something else, the phone rings and you need to mute the song? Muting it from the lock screen would be much quicker than logging back in to do it.
I just checked and my smartphone allows me to do this too.
I don’t want to do everything the same as what “any OS” does.
I am still ever so slightly miffed (in a very non-serious manner) over the dastardly move to single-click by default
Gnome has the option, and iirc Linux Mint has the feature, enabled. I am sure that there are other desktops or distros that may enable it, as well.
The question on whether this should be the default is of course debatable (endlessly), but it is easily turned off in System Settings > Workspace >Screen locking > Appearance.
I think I used this feature nearly every week for a long time (housecleaning, etc) since it was added in 2018, if not more often.
I do admit that I use KDE Connect for the purpose these days, unless it is my laptop, and it is next to me.
if i walk away from my desk while listening to music and i’m gone long enough for the screen to time out i also want it so go to sleep at that oint or shortly after.
by continuing to play after the screen times out it will keep the machine from going to suspend and i come back hours later to find my machine still running… i don’t want this behavior.
all the major music players i just tested will stop playing when the machine times out except for Rhythmbox… which is why i’m using clementine instead.
This is the default behavior and in no way makes me consider KDE professional and secure.
Features that do not reflect basic desktop computing should be considered optional, and not on by default.
